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Saturday, July 16, 2011

Day Ascent via Chicago Creek: Mt Evans, West Evans, Mt. Spaulding

Peaks: Mt. Evans - 14,264 feet
Spalding, Mt - 13,842 feet
"West Evans" - 14,256 feet


Summary
Total Elevation Gain: ~5,600’
Total Mileage: ~15 Miles
Peaks Climbed: Mt. Spaulding 13,842’, West Evans 14,256’, and Mt. Evans 14,264’
Ascent Party: Mountainmicah83, Baz Agastus (the dog)


Preface:
After getting Bierstadt done a couple of months ago and my partner not feeling the Sawtooth Traverse, I still had Evans on my checklist. Friday night at about 9PM, I decided I would make a go for it on Saturday. (Note: I had done plenty of past research on the route and area so it’s not like I just blindly picked a peak and went for it.) While someday I may get bored and go back to get individual 3000’ ascents on many peaks, I am not a current stickler on the rule, but I felt that an ascent from Summit Lake couldn’t possibly convince my conscience that it was a earned 14er Summit. I chose to go for Chicago creek on a speedy ascent in a day. With the last minute decision, I knew I couldn’t round up a partner that late in the game that would be up for a speed ascent of Evans. I defaulted to my trusty partner Baz and after packing we were in bed by 11 PM.


Saturday July 16, 2011



With a crappy couple of hours of tossing and turning, I awoke without my alarm at 1:50 am, poured the coffee and was out the door and on the road in my 1970 VW Bus by 2:10. Driving at that time is great because there is no traffic. An hour later, I was in Castle Rock and I think I pushed the bus a little too hard over Monument hill because it suddenly started to act funky. After the last Castle Rock exit my engine started to sputter and I quickly pulled over. I was so worried I killed my newly rebuilt 1835cc engine after only putting about 2000 miles and a road trip last week to the International Climbers Festival in Lander, WY. I went out and popped the back hatch to find smoke pouring out of the engine bay. I checked the oil… half a quart low. I poured the half a quart and waited 15 minutes until 3:10AM. At 3:10, I checked the engine temp and it seemed cool enough so I went to start it and it started fine and I took off only to pull over in 100’ because it was still sputtering. I was doomed. I thought I overheated it and had a valve drop in the piston. I figured the trip was over at this point because I wouldn’t have enough time for a 15 mile and 5,600’ elevation gain even if I made it there. I decided to sleep in the back until 4AM and let it fully cool down. At 4 I tried to start it and the same sputtering occurred. I figured I was in for a long day trying to figure out how to get the bus home. On a side note, the bus’ name is Pabst. I began to pray that it was just some silly problem and that there was nothing wrong with Pabst and decided to check out the engine bay one more time for any clues. After a little searching with my headlamp in the 4AM darkness, I found a screw laying down in the tin that had fresh oil that wasn’t there the day before. It had to go somewhere and I was determined to figure out where it went hoping it would fix my problems. Ah ha. A few minutes later, I spotted a hole the same size as my screw/bolt in the side of the carb. It fit like a glove. I tightened it down and went to start Past. He fired right up with his normal purr. It was only 4:10 am at this point and I was a little over an hour behind. I figured since it was such a simple problem, I would go for Evans being more cautious for storms with my later times and worst case, I could spot some granite trad lines for the future.

After cruising at around 55MPH and exiting at Morrison to skip the first steep part of I-70, I eventually made my way via the truckers lane to the Echo Lake Parking lot by about 6 AM. My planned start time was at 5 so I knew I had to be extra fast. Finally, by 6:15 Baz and I were taking our departing photo in front of Pabst and stepping/running off.

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By the time we started, the sun was already hitting the top of the peaks and a headlamp wasn’t even needed. Echo lake sure was pretty at this time and I was surprised at this late hour only one other car was parked in the lot. It had rain all over and appeared to have sat there at least all night.

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After about 10 minutes or so of jogging, I got my first view of most of the route ahead with Spaulding in the center right and Evans playing peek-a-boo at center left.
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In no time, I reached the bottom of the initial 400’ descent and was crossing Chicago creek almost to the 1 mile road portion.

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It is prime season for the flowers out there and I kept stopping progress to photograph them. Here are some columbines right off the trail. I am not a professional photographer and just snap tons of pictures with my point and shoot hoping to get a few decent ones for a good story so here is the best of what I got.

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And a shot of the woods as Baz and I scurried through. Everything was soaked from the day’s prior rain so every bush was getting us wet as well as the fact that that all of the rocks and roots made for slick travels.
It was at about this point that I found a random cucumber laying right in the middle of the trail. I figured some backpackers from the day prior must have dropped it so I set it on a stump and continued on.

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I reached the presumed burn area and got another view of the route ahead and the upper cirque. Still haven’t seen another soul since I left the car.

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Alternating between jogging and speed walking, I made quick work to treeline. The lower Chicago lake is below the willows, the upper lake is above that 50’ rock headwall and summit lake is still approximately 1,500 verts away over that headwall that looks rather steep from a distance. At this point the trail got super muddy for the next half a mile as I hopped from rock to rock and side to side trying to keep dry and semi-clean shoes.

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Here is a cool boulder overhanging right over the trail in one spot. This is an example of one of the hundreds of boulders hiding back in this basin just waiting for folks to come climb all over. I was still amazed I hadn’t seen another person yet.

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What, snow in Mid-July at 11,500’? No way. I didn’t bring crampons. What ever shal I do? Good thing the trail went around to the right. That was a close one. Whew.

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Finally, I reach the upper lake and see a few tents scattered throughout the area with folks up and about. None of which look like they are planning to climb Evans. While Baz is always on my heals and off a leash, I politely leashed him through the area where there were people. As soon as we were by, I unleashed him. He is always so close behind me, I kick him in the face when my foot slips. We start up the headwall to the Mt. Warren and Mt. Spaulding Saddle and it starts to not look that bad. My energy level was getting low as all I had eaten for the day was some pop-tarts on the drive up and I was definitely not running up this hill. Just pushing hard and chugging up like a cog train. I think I can, I think I can!

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I stop to take a quick sip of water and photograph the basin below. Gorgeous.

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And looking North towards Long’s Peak, I see some darker clouds developing and I begin to wonder what they are going to do as I watch them. They were definitely rain clouds but they were almost sitting still and didn’t seem to be electrically charged or shooting up or anything weird so I cautiously continued on keeping a close watch on the system. I was ready to bail at any time as I know better than to mess with storms.

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Almost to the saddle, I grab a beta photo of the aprons. They were just sitting there calling my name. What beautiful pieces of slab granite and a great way to earn the summit. Next time I guess. I had it in my mind that I was going to have a few hundred feet of descent from the saddle to summit lake but at the top, the lake was right there. I stopped and sucked down a clif shot and threw the dog a couple of treats. At this point it was about 9AM. Not bad I suppose. 2:45 from echo lake to summit lake where there was already a full parking lot of cars from road bikers and hikers.
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A few short minutes later and I was headed up Mt. Spaulding. I was on a mission and was cruising right along. My original plan was to be home around 3 or 4 PM when the wife was due back but with an hour delay in my start, I was pushing extra hard to try and make it so we could do some much needed weed pulling in the yard together.

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I continued up the gentle slopes of the 13,842 Mt. Spaulding as I passed a Mother and Daughter taking a break.

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Still watching the storm to the north east, it appeared that Longs and Mt. Meeker were now getting rain. Still no lightning and almost no movement from the clouds in my direction though. I figured I would just keep chugging.

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A look east back into the Chicago creek basin with Summit lake and the Chicago Lakes and the storm brewing out yonder. It feels nice to have enough experience to watch the clouds and know when to be worried. Still in shorts and a tee-shirt at this point with no need for the goretex, gloves, and hat I carry year round.

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Almost at the summit of Spaulding, I got a good shot of the upper cirque towards the summit that was a great view of the Aprons as well. Most of the upper trail goes about 100’ in elevation West and below the other side of the ridge.

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With the 10 sec timer set on the camera and a quick scamper, I was able to get my own summit photo of Baz and I. Easy peasy so far.

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A quick jog off of the Spaulding Summit and into the upper area towards the Evans Ridge, you could pretty clearly spot the exit from the Sawtooth traverse down below.
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It was around here that I passed a couple coming down with a large dog talking with a couple going up. I overheard the couple returning saying the trail head was steep and their dog had trouble in a few spots. They gave the ascending couple advice that it would probably be another hour and a half to the summit.
I was a bit taken back because I didn’t remember hearing of any difficult sections on this trail and began to worry about the storm and the time it was going to take me to reach the summit. These normal worries can usually be discussed with a partner but with the dog I was left with the thoughts to rattle in my mind. I kept pressing onward.

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Reaching the point where you could see the sawtooth, it got windy and chilly and I was running low on energy again. I choked down a mini clif bar and threw on the goretex and gloves and hat that I ended up removing 5 minutes later due to profuse sweating. At this point, my camera went kaput and even new batteries weren’t making it work. It was reading some sort of lens error so the rest of the photos are with the iphone 3gs at 2MP so I apologize for the quality of the rest. At least I had some sort of backup I guess.

Here is a look at Bierstadt and most of the sawtooth. You can’t see it due to the quality but there were no less than 30 folks standing atop the Bierstadt summit.

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Being so close, I made I quick detour off of the trail and tagged the summit of the unranked, unofficial 14er, west Evans up atop the Aprons. I had a good view of Evans proper with folks on the summit. Taking the true ridge from here and a fun little scramble, we made the crowded summit and found the polished USGS marker from so many greasy hands touching it by 1020 AM just over 4 hours after leaving the car. I never did find that hard or steep section that couple with the large dog were talking about and it was less than 30 min from where I saw them to the top. Funny how perception works I suppose.

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We had a couple take our summit picture. #48 for me and #23 for Baz. 10 More to go baby and then I can focus more on alpine 5th class.

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Then we sat to eat a salmon pouch and a couple of doggie treats as we looked at the route back down. The storm seemed to be dissolving at this point and the clouds above were almost motionless.

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Now it was time to find the Trail for the north east face route for our descent. I didn’t see the need to go back around via Spaulding. I took the tourist trail back down to the parking lot as I passed the flood of people dogging up from the parking lot as they gasped for air. Hey… At least they were enjoying the nice weather too. I hadn’t studied exactly where the route started down but right from the parking lot, I spotted a pretty clear trail headed down. It was too easy.

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I had heard of nightmare type stories about how steep and loose this route is but it was much nicer than the standard route of Columbia. It was even nicer than the standard route of challenger as well. Making quick work, I was halfway down in no time and looking back up the route. This is definitely the summit direct route and not the scenic route that going over Spaulding provides.

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It probably took me 10 minutes to reach the road below back towards summit lake. I jogged to the now overflowing parking lot meeting a couple of folks still pondering if they could make a summit attempt for the day. I gave them the advice that the weather was still good but to be extra vigilant and willing to turn around.

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I downed another clif shot and made my hasty descent back down the headwall to the Chicago Creek basin. It was just too nice and the lake was asking for me to take a swim so Baz and I found a nice rock with deep water in front. I stripped down to my birthday suit and we dove right in. Brrr. After quickly swimming out and laying on the warm rocks, I felt so refreshed. I put back on my clothes minus the shirt and watched Baz roll in the grass to wick some of the water. With that fur coat, the wetness hopefully acted as somewhat of a cooling agent for him.

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We jogged the next couple of miles down the trail passing several folks headed both directions. The basin was now full of people. I must have seen over 200 people on the way back to the car enjoying the beautiful Colorado day. At about the point where we reached the road portion of the return hike, I quit jogging and started speed walking. Baz has never had any problems keeping up in the past on long speedy type ascents but I had a feeling the heat was getting to him. He looked normal and had plenty of water for the day but I didn’t want to push him too far figuring 15 miles and 5,600’ was enough as is. I was somewhat dreading the 400’ re-ascent back to the car but it went by very quickly and gently. We arrived back at Pabst at 12:45 just 6:30 after departing. That seemed like a pretty decent time granted I got to take lots of pictures, hang out on the summit for about 20 minutes and take a swim on the way back. I enjoyed a cold beer and Baz and I shared a package of chicken.
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What a wonderful day. We didsee sevaral SAR vehicles and an ambulance headed up the road on rou descent but I never heard of the outcome.
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Thanks for Reading.

See you at the Top!

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